Looks like it was Miss Hoover who was first heard to use it.
Please explain for the clueless amongst us, such as me.
Such is the power of falsehoods in the media. Who knew? Though I can’t fault Crichton’s artistic judgment. “Deinonychus” is not a winning stage name for anything.
IIRC, that was “Enquiring minds want to know”, popularized as the tag line for the National Enquirer tabloid.
There are lots of dinosaur names that don’t end in “–saurus”, although, until recently, a lot of the ones in wide public use did. There are, of course, plenty of other forms, including popular ones – Triceratops and its kin, Diplodocus, Ankylosaur, and plenty of others my five year old self already knew well. But there’s still a whole host of other coinages that never did get really popular, the “–raptors” among them.
My favorite is the dinosaur Laelaps, named after a creature from Greek mythology. Charles R. Knight, the premier dinosaur artist, pained a couple of Laelaps jumping vigorously around at play, back when most people thought dinosaurs were slow-moving, cold-blooded creatures, as if he anticipated more recent theories about dinosaur metabolism.
Totally granted. Five year old me knew the same list five year old you did.
But “Deinon” is a mess, “ychus” is a mess, and the sum is worse. The magic of velociraptor is it’s fully phonetic, it’s components are evocative, and it sounds Latin-scientificy without being too mysterious to pronounce or decode.
“Raptor” in Latin means “thief” or “plunderer.” Birds of prey were classed as “Raptores” in 1823, and referred to as raptors by 1873.
Henry Fairfield Osborn, who named Velociraptor (“fast thief”), was using the original Latin meaning, rather than drawing a specific link to birds. He apparently was fond of the word, since in the same year he also named Oviraptor (“egg thief”), because he thought it was robbing a nest. In fact, it was actually brooding its own eggs. He referred to Velociraptor as “Ovoraptor” in a popular account but never published that name formally.
It would break down as Dei-no-ny-chus. Admittedly Velociraptor sounds cooler, but the name is actually scarier, meaning “terrible claw” rather than “fast thief.”
The first citation in the OED is from 1984. It says the origin is uncertain, but may be an alteration of “whizz”.
1984 P. Beale Partridge’s Dict. Slang (ed. 8) 1310/1 Wass , to urinate. Felsted School… Ex Essex dial… But also Lancashire usage (where pron. wazz ).
1992 J. Peters & J. Nichol Tornado Down (1993) vi. 46 The crew members on the bridge deck were looking down at us as we wazzed gleefully over their ship.
Cool! Thank you.
Would “Dei” be pronounced to rhyme with “tea” or with “tie”? Any killer with the “die” sound in its name gets bonus points. 
Modern pronunciation of the first syllable is indeed “die”. Classical Latin would be more like “day”.
The Velociraptor was actually the smallest of the raptors, raptors discovered post Jurassic Park are almost all bigger than humans like the Utahraptor and Dakota raptor, so referring to them as generic Raptors does make some sense.
Several years ago I was getting a tooth filled by my dentist, and before he performed the task at hand he asked me if I was OK and advised me to just raise my left hand to signal him to stop or if I felt pain. I quipped to him "OK, sure. As long as you don’t ask me “Is it safe?”, to which he chuckled heartily. The younger dental assistant, she was all of 25 at most, didn’t “get it”.
I don’t know how many here have seen the movie ‘Marathon Man’, but the dental torture scene of Dustin Hoffman by the ex-nazi dentist will not be soon forgotten.
Awesome! Thank you. I’d not seen that episode. The poor plaintiff’s attorney is superb.
Though it reminds me of the one civilian jury I served on.
The prosecution had a real nice case full of neatly interlocking facts about the crime that were well-proven. None of which actually tied the defendant to any wrong-doing. The defense summation was essentially that the prosecution made total sense but also total nonsense:
What does this fact have to do with the defendant? Nothing!
What does that fact have to do with the defendant? Nothing!
What does this other fact have to do with the defendant? Nothing!
etc. etc.
We acquitted. It was essentially a frame job where they prosecuted who they could catch, not who did it. If my wife had been on the bench they’d have taken the prosecutor to jail that day.
Slight correction: Dei-non-y-chyus.
What makes it surreal is that Johnnie Cochran is the plaintiff’s attorney, so it doesn’t make sense for him to use the Chewbacca defense in the first place. Gerald is the defendant’s (Chef’s) attorney.
Even better! 
The word Omnishambles was invented by Tony Roche for the BBC’s The Thick of It and became the OED’s word of the year 2012, so rapidly and widespread was it’s usage in the UK’s political world.
Roche went on to write and produce Veep.
MiM
From the west side of the pond I can say I’ve never heard, or heard of, Omnishambles. And I read the Economist every week and did in 2012 too. So I have far more exposure to UK language, writing, and politics than the typical 'Merkin.
I’ve got to say it’s a great word though. We really could use it over here.
FWIW I knew Raptors were only hawks and eagles etc. and that Jurassic Park didn’t literally invent the name but it didn’t enter the language until the movie which is the topic of the thread.
Wheelhouse, as in whether or not a subject is familiar to a person. As in “Sorry, but nuclear physics isn’t in my wheelhouse.” I don’t recall hearing it before Deadliest Catch came around.